


Primrose

by gwendee



Series: Gwen's quest to mess with tropes [3]
Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: AU where like, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Gwen's quest to mess with common existing fate-tropes, Hanahaki Disease, Introspection, None of this is real, Too much made up lore, and then you get it again, let's just get started, listen, ok, you get Hanahaki but you don't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28505739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: On a cold evening a few days after his students' finals papers, Gakuhou Asano coughs out a flower.A short Hanahaki AU.
Relationships: Asano Gakuhou & Asano Gakushuu
Series: Gwen's quest to mess with tropes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088081
Comments: 16
Kudos: 95





	Primrose

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [perennial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405170) by [waspfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspfactor/pseuds/waspfactor). 



> Hey everyone! 
> 
> So as you all know, I am on a nice little quest series (I shall create a fic series for it) to fuck around with existing fate/mystic-related tropes like soulmates, soulmarks and now: Hanahaki, the disease where you vomit flowers and die because someone doesn't love you. Watch me completely twist and batter existing Hanahaki tropes to write this. 
> 
> Anyways, I recently read Waspfactor's fic, perennial, and I absolutely adored it. Also a short, very cool platonic Hanahaki AU, it is linked in my inspired-by section, and it has inspired me.

**Nobody asked for this far too complicated Hanahaki AU**

The first person who coughed flowers out of their lungs was afflicted with an unknown curse, that had her vomiting bloody petals at her deathbed. After she had died, she was ordered for an autopsy, and the doctors cut up her lungs to see withered flowers twisting up the cavity of her chest.

The second person (from that same village back in ancient Japan 5,000 years ago) was on his last dredges of life, rasping up tiny bits of flower, when his wife (who had gone off to the Capital several months prior, and it was later reported that she was seen in the arms of another suitor) came running back to his bedside. Her affair notwithstanding, she told him she loved him, and the next breath he took was clear.

Three months later she fled back to the Capital for her lover, and the man’s health rapidly deteriorated, before they had to cut him up and see that he had been afflicted with the same curse of the flowers in the lungs. 

That’s not really true.

Or maybe it is.  _ The Legend of Eda _ (the name of the first woman) is just one of the many folk tales surrounding the origins of  _ Hanahaki _ . It was said that the infidel wife brought the curse back to the Capital with her, and people who had been betrayed by their affections had thorns fill up in their chest. 

_ Eda _ was told in various versions to be a goddess cursed with love for her people that no longer worshipped her; or in other versions that she drank wine soaked in cherry blossoms after her lover left her; the most popularized version of which she suffered a love so powerful her own feelings erupted into bloom, but the unrequited passion caused her to asphyxiate in her own emotions.

_ Hanahaki _ , or  _ vomiting flowers _ , is a disease that comes about when you have an overwhelming emotion, and no outlet to express it. One of the most common of Hanahaki cases come from some form of unrequited love, because unrequited love accumulates in a festering of emotion that you cannot return to anyone else. Happiness and sadness and anger and fear wax and wane. 

Also common with Hanahaki are deep-etched grief from death (your chest feels like it is being stabbed over and over again), abusive cycles and living in constant fear (the feeling of choking climbing up your throat), even from depression and an inability to properly regulate emotions-

Despite the morbid setting of  _ Eda _ , Hanahaki is not fatal - or at least, it no longer is. It hasn’t been fatal for a long while now, and you can get prescriptions over the counter for it, even, painkillers and weeders and antibiotics (the flowers are always sterile growing from your lungs, but it’s still like having an open wound in your chest.) Almost everybody has some form of trauma at least once in their life, and so a couple of years after that you look at the first few petals you coughed up and pressed in your notebook with some sort of bittersweet sentiment.

The romantic aspect aside, Hanahaki is perhaps now a common respiratory disease in medical handbooks. It’s rare to get Hanahaki a second time, even rarer to get it a third, and most people handle it fine and go on with their lives.

**(post-finals arc)**

Gakuhou Asano isn’t most people.

This is his fifth type of flower, he observes with a little bit of resignation, pulling a bloody petal from his tongue. He wonders what it’s for. 

His first had been unresolved resentment from his parents’ abandonment, the second his first failure (which he could have sworn he’d felt closure over, but the resounding defeat he suffers from 3-E’s finals results had brought back memories, flower petals, and showed him that he was still subconsciously hung up over that whole debacle.) The third and fourth Hanahaki scenarios were when his wife and Ikeda died respectively. The fifth…

Gakuhou is more introspective as of late. Finals, and his subsequent talk with Koro-Sensei, has made him ruminate on his life decisions. Still, nothing comes to mind when he briefly flicks through the events of the past days, nothing that would prompt a fifth flower. 

He hears the faint sound of a door slam. Gakushuu must be home.

Gakuhou listens to footsteps thudding up the stairs and then storming past his office, before they grow fainter. Then he hears his son’s bedroom door close shut. 

Gakushuu…

If there was anyone more unlucky than Gakuhou, it was his son. Early onset of Hanahaki was  _ somewhat _ genetic, or to be specific, medical conditions like depression and anxiety had a genetic aspect to them, and they in turn increased the likelihood for emotional-regulatory diseases. 

Gakuhou wasn’t depressed. 

Maybe a little.

Gakushuu was spitting three different types of flowers by the time he was seven. The loss of his mother when he was four, and then his older brother (Ikeda) when he was five, and then…

The last one was Gakuhou’s fault.

Hanahaki in itself wasn’t a signal for something malicious, but significant and persistent cases meant a marker for terrible circumstances, which meant that the day Gakushuu in elementary school threw up in the bathroom was the day police officers came knocking on Gakuhou’s door.

Two death certificates later and he was penned down for a psychiatrist referral. Grief, the doctor says, (Gakuhou half listening, Gakushuu sobbing on a bed, breathing into a ventilator) are very complex emotions that a child may not be able to handle. Most people handle bereavement in their own time, but two rapid large losses left unhandled would result in even more grief complexities, explaining the third flower.

That’s not the whole truth, because back then Gakuhou privately knew that the third flower was because of the fear that sparked in Gakushuu’s eyes every time he came home with less than a perfect score or made a clearly-avoidable mistake. But the Gakuhou then was foolish, who thought “three flowers is nothing compared to his four if he can deal with it” and thought even more that this was simply one adversary on the list of many that Gakushuu would simply grow to handle and conquer.

That is very stupid of him, and he acknowledges that now. His own negligence of his son’s emotions only served to further exacerbate his traumas, which-

-ah, the fifth flower. That was guilt.

At dinnertime, when Gakushuu leans forward to grab a plate, Gakuhou sees the thin line of his scar peek out from under his collar. Shortly after their first appointment, many others in rapid succession where scheduled, and then they decided the best course of action for someone so young was to surgically remove the flowers altogether. He’s lucky that he’s in good physical health, the doctors tell him.

Very quickly after the surgery the third flower grows back, but the first two do not. It’s the only one that still stays till today.

That thought makes him cough up a petal. 

From across the table, Gakushuu looks up sharply. “That’s new,” he says, accusing.

“Ah, yes,” Gakuhou says. “It is.”

They share a tense moment, staring at each other.

Gakushuu’s face is unreadable. “Sucks to be you,” he says, his voice the perfect picture of impassiveness. He’s curious, though, eyes flicking between Gakuhou and his food. 

Gakuhou deliberates telling Gakushuu about it. He’s curious about the reaction he would get. “This is because of you.”

That’s probably the worst way to phrase it.

Gakushuu stands up quickly, his chair screeching backwards. “Excuse me?!”

Gakuhou quickly stands up as well. “It’s-.” His words catch in his throat, because despite everything, he’s not ready to admit a mistake to Gakushuu. He wishes he was, because the expression Gakushuu is making sends a jolt of something that feels like stabbing thorns in his chest, but his tongue ties and the words don’t come out.

There are many emotions flitting through Gakushuu’s face, but he settles on anger.

Gakuhou opens his mouth, closes it.

He watches as his son’s shoulders shake, and then he starts coughing. Cough, cough, coughs out a shredded, mangled flower head, stray petals falling onto the floor. And then with a furious snarl, Gakushuu flings the bloody flower into Gakuhou’s face.

Neither of them are medically cleared for sports (it’s one of the areas of his life that Gakushuu does not excel in, and Gakuhou knows better than to push it, despite his disappointment. A chronic respiratory disease, romantic symbolism or no, is still one.)

Yet, Gakuhou finds himself going on a jog to clear his head. Gakushuu had stormed out of the house without finishing dinner, and he’s not picking up any calls, but he’s most likely at Sakakibara’s. 

The watch around his wrist beeps, telling him to sit down. 

Gakuhou ignores it. 

He knows his limits, but obviously a new flower means his vision swims faster than it normally does, so he ends up leaning against a lamppost in the middle of the street with his hands on his knees, panting. 

Koro-sensei must have been nearby, and he must have been nosy, because when Gakuhou opens his eyes again, the octopus is there, holding a bottle of water out expectantly. 

“My, my, Principal,” the octopus says. “What emotions plague you tonight?”

Ah, emotions. 

A rattling cough shakes his chest, and out comes out petals of half a flower.

“Oh,” Koro-sensei says, “That is new.”

Koro-sensei, no longer human with human organs and human lungs, no longer cough flowers. But when he had been, (he privately admitted to Gakuhou, when they were in the middle of their heart-to-heart in the office), he coughed out a bouquet every day, and every day his first student strung the petals together and presented it to him, tied in a bushel with twine and curiosity and adoration and sharp eyes.

(When his student had betrayed him, for the first time for as long as he can remember that night Koro-sensei coughs out only one single flower - the crushed head of a white rose.)

“They’re for Gakushuu,” Gakuhou says. 

“Ah,” Koro-sensei says, his bead eyes narrowing into slits. He says, almost mischievously, “unrequited love?”

Gakuhou pauses. It’s not something he’s considered.

“I hope not,” he says. 

“You should go to the hospital.”

“I am fine.”

“You,” Koro-sensei chides, “are blue in the face.”

“I will be fine,” Gakuhou insists, “after some rest. Leave me alone.”

“Who the fuck are you talking to?”

It’s Gakushuu, running up to him. Gakuhou turns around, Koro-sensei is no longer there.

“Don’t run,” Gakuhou scolds.

“I will let you die here,” Gakushuu snaps at him. But Gakushuu still hauls him home, but he doesn’t speak to him on the way there, and then when they’re back Gakushuu dumps him on the couch and slams his room door. 

The feeling in Gakuhou’s chest swells painfully again.

He spits out another flower. Is that a sixth? No, it’s just an amalgamation of the five. It happens sometimes, when Gakuhou’s head boils over too much with too many thoughts.

The next morning, Gakuhou sees a vase on the dining table. In it stands a single primrose stem, halfway to wilting.

_ The Latin word, Primus, means first.  _

_ The primrose blooms in early spring, and so it represents beginning, new life, and birth.  _

_The petals on the blossoms can stand for all of the various stages of life, including birth, life itself, consummation, and of course, death._

_These flowers can stand for neglected merit, inconstancy, and even bashfulness, but usually, they are given to show someone that you can’t live without them._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Gakushuu's current Hanahaki flower is a primrose. I don't know what the other flowers are, I haven't thought about it but *finger guns* you can, in the comments! 
> 
> And yes, the flowers people cough up do come out already half wilted and crushed because um, that's a flower from your body, if it came up your windpipe intact it would be very concerning. But I hope that doesn't take away whatever vague symbolism I tried to squeeze from the last line, where Gakushuu is recovering and the cause of his Hanahaki is "halfway to wilting". (Sobbing) my boy is growing stronger and the Asanos' relationship is now less driven by fear
> 
> By the way the whole first section is completely pulled out of my ass LOL I wanted to set the mood. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
